How to increase brand awareness: 11 ways

Social Media Specialist
Updated 15 January, 2024
Lauren Taylor
Social Media Specialist
The more people know about you, the more clients you get. Here are tips on how to build and increase brand awareness on social media. Read them, try them, get more clients and money.
Reading time — 14 minutes

Brand awareness definition

Brand awareness indicates how many people know about your brand and product. In other words, it shows how popular they are among the target audience. When you let more people know about you, you increase brand awareness.

Brand awareness is more than brand recognition. Not only do people remember you when they see your name or logo, but they also remember you without a hint. They can associate you with routine things in their lives. For example, they may think about you when they see a car of your brand color, though it doesn't have your logo or name.

Brand awareness in social media marketing can also be defined by its measurements. They are such KPIs as reach, impressions, audience growth, etc. The higher they are, the stronger the awareness is.

Why brand awareness is important

Brand awareness affects your revenue. And revenue is the whole thing you've launched your business for. You want to keep your revenue good, and you need strong brand awareness for this.

How exactly does brand awareness affect your revenue? Think about two shops: a popular one and an unknown one. Which of them will you choose, other things being equal? You are likely to opt for the popular one. And other people usually follow the same line.

People tend to choose what they already know. So, brand awareness determines how many customers choose you over the rivals. If it is strong, people choose you. Let's see how to increase brand awareness to "strong" using social media.

How to increase brand awareness using social media 

Social media is a great help when you want to increase brand awareness. It allows you to reach out to as many people as you would never be able to reach offline. And as you keep showing up to people again and again, they remember you.

Read below how you can reach people on social media regularly to build strong brand awareness.

Become recognizable to build brand awareness

Before you tell people about your brand, make sure they will remember it and recognize it the next time. Thus, you increase brand awareness faster.

Get a logo that sticks in users' minds

Logo is essential when you want to build brand awareness. A simple image can do more than words. That's because people identify an image quicker. A logo that sticks in mind is:

  • unique. It doesn't convey references to other brands, or at least to popular brands.
  • simple. Use a few large objects and a few colors. You know you get it right when every detail on your logo is identifiable wherever you use it. For example, when you use it as an Instagram profile photo.
  • memoizable. Try to draw your logo by memory, ask your friends to do the same. If you do this easily, you've got a good logo.

Develop a prominent brand voice

You have to be more than a product or company to increase your brand awareness. You have to be a personality. This means you need a set of characteristics and opinions. You will voice them on social media then.

Here is how to develop a prominent brand voice to build brand awareness:

  • Decide on your opinions. Just like a person, your brand must have preferences and values. Don't be shy to express your attitude to a situation. You make a connection with the audience this way. They will remember you. Either as a person who finds pineapple pizza confusing or as a weirdo who likes it.
  • Decide what vibe your brand expresses. It's up to you whether you want to be the one who produces jokes non-stop or who is sentimental and uses hundreds of emojis in every message. You may also want to be sarcastic, or reasonable and straight. Whatever you choose, make sure your tone can be identified from the first words.

Communicate with your audience

People know about you only if you show yourself to them. That's why you need to be socially active to increase brand awareness. Interact with users in your, followers' and rivals' accounts.

Go right into the thick of things. Comment on their posts and Tweets, react to Stories. Ask questions and answer others' questions. Reply to what people say and initiate a dialog yourself. Don't be afraid to express yourself according to your brand voice.

The more you communicate with your audience, the more you increase your brand awareness. They see your name and photo again and again. And as you know, repetition is the mother of learning. At some point, users remember your brand name and photo. What's more, they associate them with the personality you chose for the brand's voice.

Use hashtags on social media

Hashtags are one of the ways to promote your Instagram account on social media by increasing reach. The more people see your brand's posts, the more you increase your brand awareness.

When you add hashtags to your posts, you have a high chance to be found by people who do not follow you yet. If you use hashtags regularly, they see you regularly. At some point, they remember your username and logo, and can recognize them.

Create your own hashtags with the brand name. Use them in your posts to increase brand awareness. And more importantly, encourage users to use them. For example, start a challenge. Your brand's name will appear on social media even more often. It will appear under the users' posts on the hashtags pages and in their followers' feeds.

Provide and promote an affiliate program

Affiliate program works perfectly when you want to build brand awareness. It is like a permanently opened vacancy for advertising your brand. You attract users to advocate your brand by giving them a perk. This perk is usually a discount.

Your affiliates increase your brand awareness for you. They enthusiastically advertise affiliate products because they benefit from this. They offer their friends to buy the product or to join the affiliate program too. Even if the friends do not become your new clients or affiliates, at least they now have heard about you.

Contribute to your community

Develop a relationship with your audience. Once the relationship becomes strong, you get a loyal brand community. It is people who speak about you and recommend you. The word of mouth naturally increases brand awareness. Let's see how to make the mouth speak:

  • Meet with your community. Spending time together makes your relationship stronger. On social media, you can start a live stream, online conference, or marathon.
  • Run public relations campaigns to show you care. For example, you may sponsor events or give something for free as a surprise, taking after Red Bull. If your audience sees that you care about it, you get its credibility and loyalty. They are essential for a strong connection.

Invite users to participate in your community activities to increase brand awareness. You can invite them to join your live stream. Or you can invite them to donate to a charity fund you've started. If they join and donate, they feel like a part of your brand community. Inevitably they start to think and speak about themselves as a part of it.

The topic of the meetings and campaigns should be relevant to your niche. Then the followers will be more likely to participate.

Read how to live stream for your TikTok audience with any number of followers.

Offer freebies

Naturally, as your brand awareness increases, more people start using your product. But this may also work the other way around.

When people use your product, they see your brand name and logo consistently. Besides, since you become a part of their lives, they talk about you with friends. The friends hear about you and see your logo and name regularly too. All of them are doomed to remember your brand. Thus, you increase brand awareness.

When you offer your product for free, more people use it. Here works the fear of missing out. They get an opportunity to have for free what they usually pay for. The fear that you stop providing it for free and they have to pay makes them use your product.

Freebies are a free version of your product. It depends on what you sell.

  • Items. This is about a physical product that you sell. You can offer users a free sample of it. If you have an assortment, you can offer the simplest one. It may be cosmetics, a bag, T-shirt. For example, Yves Rocher puts the product samples in the orders. They are enough to apply once, if people want more, they have to buy full packs.
  • Services. If your product is an app, software, online service, course, or program, you can offer users a freemium. This is a free plan that includes basic features and tools. For example, Taplink provides a free plan. The plan is enough to create a landing page with multiple links that one then add to their Instagram bio. If users want the page to be more converting, they can pay to add opt-in forms, timers, pictures, videos, etc.

Post a shareable photo or video

Make users share content with your name and logo to increase brand awareness. They are likely to do this if you give them ready shareable content. They will send it to their friends and family. Thus, more people will see your username and logo.

There are two things that distinguish sharable content. When you want to increase brand awareness, post content that is:

  • share-worthy. You won't send a bummer to your friend because you love them and value their time. No one will. That's why the content should be fun, relatable, or useful. It should evoke a strong emotion or feeling, whether it is happiness or interest, or something else.
  • unique. There is not much sense in sending a friend what you both have seen several times. It won't evoke an emotion, nor will it be useful. Make something fresh. Then users will share it.
  • easy-to-share. Sure, you can't change share buttons on social networks. But you can give users every opportunity to share. For example, if you build brand awareness on Instagram, you can post to the grid, and then repost to Stories. A user will choose whether to share the post or story.

Regular posting is also important when you want to increase brand awareness. The more posts you add, the higher chances people see them. Besides, you should constantly be in the social media public eye to maintain the awareness you've got. Use Instagram in-app scheduler, or any other scheduler to plan posting ahead, it is a great help.

Collaborate with brands and influencers

Collaborate with popular social accounts to increase your brand awareness. This is a way to introduce yourself to people who don't know about you. Some of them will remember you. Some of them will need to see you one more time in the future to remember. Anyway, this is a good investment.

You do not just increase brand awareness, you gain credibility when you collaborate. The audience trusts the collaborator. If the collaborator says you are a good brand, the audience believes it.

Use all possible ways to collaborate. You can use the Instagram Collab feature, go live together, and mention each other in posts. If the collaborator is from the same industry, you can also run a contest among their followers who subscribe to you.

Guest posting is another way to increase brand awareness on social media. Use a photo, video, or text as a guest post. Ask a blogger to post them on their website or social account. In return, you can post their content on your social page.

Run contests on social media

Make use of contests on social media to increase your brand awareness. This is like a game to participate while scrolling the feed that promises a prize. Users want social media to entertain them, and they like prizes. So you can expect them to take part and do what you want them.

Make rules that contribute to your brand awareness increasing. Ask users to tell others about you. Ask them to tag their friends in the comments, repost your photo or video to their accounts, post with your brand hashtags.

The winner should be determined publicly. Show how you choose a winner in a live stream, or at least post a video. Thus, users can believe you choose the winner fairly.

Use all social media channels

Use all social media opportunities to reach out to your audience. The more of them you use, the more chances to increase brand awareness you have. Share photo, video, text, and audio content. Choose suitable platforms to post them. Below are some examples.

  • Visual content, like photos and videos, is in demand on Instagram and TikTok. Users there prefer to watch, so show them your brand.
  • Text posts are good for Facebook or messaging app channels, like a WhatsApp or Telegram channel. People expect to get messages from you there. So write about your brand to increase brand awareness.
  • Audio content is usually podcasts. Start one to increase your brand awareness. You can post podcasts on YouTube or Google Podcasts.

Launch paid advertisements on social media

Consider paid advertising on social media to be shown to people regularly and increase brand awareness. You pay for being shown to people. You can set up how many times this will happen. So you can be sure they will see you as many times as you need.

One of the best things about paid advertising is that you choose what people will see you. You can set the age, location, interests, and many other parameters. Thus, you will be shown exactly to your target audience.

Read how to launch Instagram post promotion in a couple of clicks.

How to measure brand awareness

Whatever you do, you need to regularly check how it is going. Then, you can tell you are going the right way or need to adjust your strategy. You need to measure your brand awareness too. Then, you can tell whether your actions contribute to its increase or make it worse.

Use account statistics to measure brand awareness

There are several metrics that you should check to measure brand awareness:

  • Reach indicates how many people saw your content. The more people saw it, the more people are likely to start recognizing you. Stable reach growth indicates that brand awareness increases.
  • Impressions indicate how many times people saw your content. It may bewilder after reading about Reach. See, if one person saw your post twice, then Reach is 1, and Impressions is 2. Impressions growth is a good sign. The more times people see you, the more likely they start recognizing you.
  • Engagement includes likes, shares, comments. You want it to grow too when you want to increase brand awareness. This indicates that people look at your posts consciously enough to make up an opinion. So they definitely notice your name and logo. Besides, your posts evoke emotions strong enough to be expressed with likes and words. Your brand is now associated with these emotions. Users are no more indifferent to your brand.

Check your branded hashtag

If people use your brand hashtags in their posts, not only can they recognize you but they also remember about you without an external hint. This is a very strong sign that you succeeded to increase your brand awareness.

Use social listening

Find what people say about you to measure brand awareness. Google your brand, use the search on social networks, or use social listening tools, like Google Alerts. If you see people write about you in their blogs, in the comments, it is a good sign.

3 examples of brand awareness marketing strategies

Let's see how big companies increase brand awareness. They do exactly what is described above.

Nike

Nike has a recognizable logo and slogan. They were instrumental in building brand awareness. Whenever you see a rounded tick, the brand pops up in the memory. And whenever you want your friend to stop waffling, you probably can't help saying "just do it".

Nike's community is big. It does a great job uniting different people. For instance, its mission statement is "If you have a body, you are an athlete" which means everybody can be a part of its sports-focused community.

Old Spice

Old Spice builds its brand awareness using a strong brand voice and viral sharable ads. You may not remember every sail on Old Spice's logo. You may not recall any of its slogans. But you definitely remember being taken aback when you saw its ad for the first time.

Old Spice's ad is always fun, it's austere, it's the mark of a man. Once you have seen it, you will never forget the brand. Some laugh at the videos, some find them awkward. But no one feels indifferent. And they want to share their impression with their friends, which increases brand awareness.

Red Bull

Red Bull is one of the most popular energy drink brands. Contributing to its community is one of the most effective things that it does to increase brand awareness. Adrenaline enthusiasts and students are the community focus.

One of the most memorable Red Bull campaigns was aimed at students. The brand delivered crates full of the energy drink cans to students' campuses as a part of the Ari Drop campaign. This took place on 500 campuses in 55 countries, so they reached quite a big audience. And this is not to mention the hustle raised on social media.

Red Bull sponsors extreme events regularly, which increases brand awareness. For example, you can see the brand among Formula One sponsors. It also supports football, hockey, and other sports games. Besides the sport, it supports film events and music festivals, where you may also want to get some energy boost.

To sum up

Use the described ways to increase brand awareness. This is an investment that multiplies your revenue. Here is what you should do:

  • Make a prominent brand voice.
  • Make the most of your social media accounts.
  • Contribute to your community.